


Etiam in Morte, Superest Amor

by queenmidalah



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-11
Updated: 2016-10-11
Packaged: 2018-08-21 22:48:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8263216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenmidalah/pseuds/queenmidalah
Summary: Bucky and Jemma have a second chance at a love lost.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is the sequel of "When the Past Holds the Future". It would be important to read that one before reading this one.
> 
> Also- as that 'fic was initially written between seasons 1 & 2, the revelation of Skye as Daisy was not made, so she will be referred to as Skye until such time as I decide to incorporate that into the story, since this picks up pretty much directly from the end of the first one.
> 
> Debating if this is going to be the start of a new series, but for now it's not. 
> 
> I can not guarantee how often I'll be updating as the muses have been very fickle of late.
> 
> The title means "In death, love survives" in Latin.

Snippets of memory had slowly started filtering in after the events of Washington D.C. He was thankful for when Steve had found him, as more memories had started to come, but he was often edgy and couldn’t understand why. He had simply chalked it up to the very large gaps within his memory, all that he had endured under Hydra, plus their conditioning.

It wasn’t until the Avengers had been called in to help someone named Coulson, someone they thought dead, to assist in finding a way to retrieve their biochemist, Jemma Simmons. The name kept tickling something at the back of his mind the entire time they were looking for her. When they got word that she had returned from wherever she had been, Steve and Bucky had headed straight for the medical ward where they had taken her to get checked out.

He had not expected the flood that would hit his mind when he saw her. How could he have ever forgotten that face or that voice? How could he possibly have forgotten the one thing that completed him more than the brother of his soul? He had to take it slow as he entered the room, his focus completely on Jemma as he moved closer. He was well aware of how tense everyone was as he approached her. He had a reputation and as far as any of them knew, he only had a few of his memories back. Those he did have back consisted primarily of his friendship with Steve.

“Bucky,” he heard her whisper. “Do…”

“I remember,” he finally got a chance to say as he stepped right in front of her. His left hand, the one that could crush bone into powder, reached out to her. It made everyone tense even more, but he was immensely gentle with her. He had to be, he could never harm the woman that stole his heart almost seventy-five years ago. His blue eyes flitted to her rounded belly before his right hand reached out to caress it, his eyes questioning.

“I found out after you were lost,” she said. “I… I had no idea I would ever…” He saw her bite her bottom lip. He wanted to kiss her worries away.

“I told you I was coming back to you,” he said. “I promised.” He felt a grin form when he heard her laugh, tears slipping onto her cheeks.

“You did,” she said. “I just never expected it would take seventy years.”

He lowered his head to press his forehead against hers. The length of his hair created a curtain around him, it made him glad that he hadn’t cut it yet. It allowed them to shut out the world in a small way. “What’s a few decades between lovers?” he whispered to her.

“You are such an idiot,” she said, laughing softly. “You truly remember?” 

Lifting his head, Bucky rubbed her belly with a look of both fondness and awe. “Things are patchy,” he admitted. “But they are coming back. You… you I could never forget. It’s like… it’s almost like the moment I saw you, someone turned on a switch and it all started coming back.”

He felt his heart thump against his breastbone as Jemma reached up and pulled his head down to hers. “I’m so glad,” she whispered before her lips were pressing against his. He didn’t hesitate in pulling her closer and kissing her back, loving the feel of their child between them. He forgot others were in the room until Leo Fitz spoke.

“Would someone mind explaining what the hell just happened?”

“I agree,” Phil Coulson said. “I’d like to know how my daughter is pregnant and why the Winter Soldier seems so familiar to her.”

Jemma curled her fingers in Bucky’s hair to soothe the sudden stiff posture at being called the Winter Soldier. She kissed his lips once more before he straightened and she turned her head to look at Coulson.

“His name is Bucky, Daddy,” Jemma said. “James Buchanan Barnes. And he’s the father of my baby.”

Chatter exploded around them. It made Bucky edgy because some of the tones, particularly from Fitz, were not exactly friendly in nature.

“Quiet,” a familiar voice entered the fray. Jemma glanced over to where Melinda May commanded in her normal understated way.

“Jemma is only just back. Considering she is now pregnant, we should take into consideration that she needs to be checked out or at least resting comfortably as she explains where she was, for how long as she clearly told us as she was waking that wherever she was, she was there much longer than three days,” May said. “So why don’t we all head to the lounge for comfort rather than bombarding her and Barnes both with questions and accusations.”

“A good idea, Agent May,” Steve said. “Because I’d like a chance to also catch up with Jemma under the circumstances.” His eyes flickered to her swollen belly. “I never…”

“I know,” Jemma said. “We definitely need to talk.”

~~

Coulson’s team, along with the rest of the Avengers once they joined them, sat in various spots in the lounge. Bucky refused to leave Jemma’s side, despite Coulson wanting to be with his daughter, and Fitz with his friend. The three men finally compromised with May and Skye interjecting to deal with Fitz. Coulson and Bucky sat on the largest sofa in the lounge, allowing Jemma to be between them. Bucky sat with his back in the corner of the sofa, allowing Jemma to lean back into his chest, while she draped her legs over her father’s lap. Skye made Fitz sit in one of the nearby chairs and poked him when he would grumble too much over Bucky showing Jemma attention.

“Now,” Tony Stark said, glancing at Coulson with an odd expression before shaking his head. “Who wants to start?”

“Pretty sure I should,” Jemma said. “Since I didn’t meet Steve or Bucky first. I met Colonel Phillips and Agent Carter in approximately October of 1943.”

“You met Peggy Carter first?” May questioned. “What was that like?”

Jemma wrinkled her nose a little. “Odd,” she admitted. “I mean, of course, I’ve seen pictures of her from then, but to talk to her and not give the slightest hint of who she was…”

“What? A founder of SHIELD?” Clint Barton asked from where he stood beside Natasha Romanov.

“No, her grandmother,” Coulson said.

“Her _what_?” Two voices asked, one louder than the other. Jemma lifted her eyes to look at Bucky, his eyebrow arched as he looked at her. Her gaze shifted to Steve, who was staring at her then at Coulson, his face a little pale.

“Uh... yeah,” Coulson said, his ears turning a little red. “Peggy Carter is my mother.”

“Oh that explains so much,” Natasha said, a slight laugh in her voice. She walked over and patted Steve on the back to get him to snap out of it. “Easy there, Rogers.”

“How could I not see it?” Steve asked. “I mean, you look so much like her, Jemma.”

“How could you have known?” Jemma said. “Even she couldn’t have ever guessed, nor could Colonel Phillips. They were the only ones that knew I wasn’t from 1943. For all intents and purposes, everyone else just thought me another scientist on the team.”

“Makes more sense now to know why you were in my father’s notes,” Tony said. “I remember seeing notes about a Jemma. A scientist that rivaled his own mind, who Barnes had been involved with that suddenly disappeared in April of 1945.”

“You were there for almost two years?” Skye asked Jemma. 

Jemma looked over at her friend, nodding her head. “The first time I met Steve and Bucky was after that rescue of the 107th from Hydra in November of ’43. I was there about a year before Bucky was thought lost after the train assault to capture Arnim Zola,” she said.

Steve and Bucky were both stiff, Bucky’s arm tightening around Jemma. “You knew,” he whispered. He cleared his throat. “That night we were together, that’s why you didn’t want me to go. You… you kept saying you had a bad feeling, but it wasn’t a feeling. You knew.”

“I knew,” Jemma whispered, her heart aching. She watched Bucky frown deeper, his mind working over the knowledge.

“You could have stopped it,” Steve said. “You could have--.”

“She tried,” Bucky whispered. Steve looked at him. Bucky returned his gaze. “She asked me not to leave her. She asked me not to go, but you needed me. She tried to insist you had the other commandos, but I told her you needed me to be there too.”

“She should have tried harder knowing!” Steve said.

“Don’t blame Jemma for this!” Skye said, defending her friend.

“Besides, changing history is never a good idea,” Natasha pointed out. “There is no telling what would have happened had Bucky Barnes not have been thought dead.”

“My parents would be alive,” Tony pointed out. Despite the knowledge that Bucky had been controlled, it didn’t ease the pain and anger of knowing he had been responsible.

“You can’t know that,” Clint said. “Hydra wanted Howard Stark dead and that super soldier serum. They would’ve found someone else to complete the task.”

“Steve wouldn’t have ended up in the ice,” Tony said.

“Can’t know that either,” Coulson said. “On top of it, Barnes could have ended up in the ice too. And despite what we know now, there is no guarantee he would have survived right along with Steve.”

“The fact is, you can circle around the what-ifs all you want,” May said. “No one can know how different things would have been had Barnes known about what was to happen to him and he not be there. Steve could have been the one to get knocked from the train and he never would’ve defeated Schmidt. No one knew that Barnes was going to survive that fall, just as no one would have known if he would have survived in the ice with Steve. We have to deal with the fact of what the reality is now.”

“Which is the fact that my daughter is pregnant with a former Hydra assassin’s child,” Coulson said. “One conceived in 1944, meaning that my future grandchild is technically older than myself and its mother.”

“No, it only means that it’s technically the longest pregnancy in history,” Jemma corrected her father. “And do not refer to Bucky as a former Hydra assassin!”

“It’s what I was, doll,” Bucky reminded her gently. “After I fell and they found me, it’s what I was forged into.”

“But you are here with Steve and the rest of the Avengers. That means you aren’t that man anymore,” Jemma said, facing Bucky more. “And you never could have been that man. You aren’t a cold, vicious killer.”

“Aren’t I?” Bucky asked her. “Obviously something was there already for them to forge me so well.”

“I heard the stories when you came back from missions, Bucky,” Jemma said softly. “I listened as you purged every one of those wounds from your heart when you would come see me after you got back. A cold, vicious killer would hold onto those wounds and let it fuel him. A cold, vicious killer wouldn’t have made sure to shower before coming to see the woman he was with, never caring if he brought the smell of war to her.”

Bucky’s mouth quirked upwards, his hand reaching up to brush her hair from her face. “You always have seen the good in me,” he said quietly.

“Because there is good in you,” Jemma said softly. She blinked and lowered her head, a sudden yawn escaping.

“Jemma should rest,” May said, getting to her feet.

“Wait, what now?” Fitz asked, rising as well. “I mean with Jemma…”

“I’m not leaving her,” Bucky said, his eyes on Fitz. The younger man looked like he wanted to take Jemma from Bucky’s care.

“We’re not leaving until we get answers from Coulson,” Natasha said. “He said he would explain his own situation once we had Simmons back.”

“Under the circumstances, I’d like to hold off on that,” Coulson said. “Only because Jemma’s seen my medical records once Fury gave them to me. She’ll be much better equipped at explaining it than I could.”

“Didn’t get her brains from you, huh?” Tony asked.

“My father is quite intelligent,” Jemma snapped at Tony. “Thank you very much. But if you mean my love of science, no I did not get that from my father or my grandmother. I got that from my mother, who was once a SHIELD scientist herself.”

“SHIELD royalty then?” Clint Barton asked.

“There’s a reason I go by Jemma Simmons and not Jemma Coulson,” Jemma said. “Simmons is my mother’s maiden name. If I was going to do well in SHIELD, it was not going to be because my grandmother was Peggy Carter or that my father was Phil Coulson. My mother had already been out of SHIELD long enough by then that I wasn’t living up to as much of a legacy, but I still was scrutinized once they realized I was the daughter of Doctor Elizabeth Simmons.”

“You do your grandmother and your father proud, Simmons,” May said. “And your mother. Even if you did terrify your father when you attempted to sacrifice yourself during the Chitauri virus incident.” The wrong words to ever utter as she felt Bucky stiffen against her and watched Steve, Tony, and Clint all come to attention.

“Sacrifice yourself?” Bucky asked just as Tony asked: “What incident?”

“Artifacts that were found and taken by some firefighters that assisted in the Chitauri cleanup,” Coulson said. “A very infectious virus to humans was found. Jemma got infected. She and Fitz managed to find the cure, but not before thinking they hadn’t. Lightening events were occurring and it was discovered that those who came into contact with the virus became charged with electrostatic that would cause a large pulse. On the ground, it would have not harmed anyone else unless they were infected. However, we were on the Bus in mid-flight over the water on our way to the sandbox.”

“Coulson was given orders to dump Jemma,” May said. “We had a two-hour window that Jemma hypothesized would be how long she had. We were at least three hours from being able to land.”

“I refused,” Coulson immediately said when Bucky and Steve both looked at him. “Even if Jemma wasn’t my daughter, I’d never sacrifice one of my team’s life like that.”

“I knocked Fitz out,” Jemma said. “And I jumped out of the plane. I figured I would release the electrostatic on the way down, but I wouldn’t take the bus out with me.”

“Which means you jumped without a parachute,” Natasha said.

Jemma nodded, sitting up more, one hand on her swelling stomach, the other on Bucky’s thigh. “I would have been dead before I ever hit the ground.” She looked at Bucky when she felt his thigh tense.

“Then how did you survive?” Clint asked.

Jemma looked over at him. “Ward took the parachute and anti-serum from Fitz and jumped out after me. The pulse still knocked me out, but after being injected with the anti-serum, I didn’t die. When I woke up, I was in the water with Ward waiting for pick up.”

“But Ward turned out to be Hydra,” Fitz said. “I’ve never understood why he bothered.” He looked at Jemma with horror. “Not that I’m not glad that he did save you!”

“He had to keep up pretense probably,” May said.

“But he didn’t have to,” Skye said. “That’s something I never understood either. If he was intent on killing any of us, he had the perfect out with Jemma. Yet he risked his life to save her. He didn’t even know when he ran off and jumped that the anti-serum would work as Fitz said, it was all chaotic.”

“Jemma is one of the brightest minds of SHIELD,” Coulson said. “If Ward could save her, find a way to ingratiate himself deeper into her life, he had a chance to persuade her to join Hydra. Her intelligence and prowess in science alone would have him wanting to bring her to Hydra’s side. If he delved deep enough into her family history, it would be a huge boon for someone like Ward to get a brilliant scientist on their side that was also the granddaughter of a founding member of the organization.”

“Is Ward still alive?” Bucky asked.

“Unfortunately,” May said. “We are constantly keeping ourselves in high alert because of it. More than we normally would.”

“What does he look like?” Bucky asked. His tone was growing dangerous.

“Bucky, no,” Jemma said quickly. She squeezed his thigh until he looked at her. “Ward isn’t worth it.”

“He’s a danger to you,” he said.

“One that will be dealt with in time, but our child needs you. I need you. You only just got all of your memories back, I don’t want to lose you now,” Jemma said.

“You aren’t the only one that wants a piece of Ward, Barnes,” Coulson said. “Something we can discuss later, but for now, Jemma needs rest as we already said.”

“I can--,” Fitz started but froze when Bucky made a growling noise.

“Bucky has me, Fitz,” Jemma said. “He’d never hurt me and I think we’ve been separated long enough.”

“Go on,” Coulson said, nodding to Bucky and Jemma as Fitz tried to protest. Jemma slipped her arm around Bucky’s waist as he walked with her out of the lounge. They both ignored Fitz’s loud protests to Coulson, even as May was talking to Steve and the others about arranging for them to have rooms during their stay.

It wasn’t until they were at Jemma’s room and inside that Jemma finally spoke. “Promise me you won’t go after him,” she said. 

Bucky paused a moment before finishing kneeling in front of Jemma to take off her shoes and massage her feet. He grinned a bit when a groan escaped her. “I promise I won’t go after him alone,” he said. He shook his head when she started to speak.

“Jemma, I can’t sit back and let someone go that I know hurt you,” he said. “That probably intended on using you to be a tool for Hydra. But your father is right, I’m not the only one that wants a piece of him. And you were right that you and our child need me.”

“But you still intend on going after him,” Jemma huffed, crossing her arms. It was almost comical because of her expanding belly and her fuller breasts.

“I will go after him with your father,” Bucky said. “And most likely the rest of your team. With Ward it is personal, but he’s also Hydra. Hydra needs to be eliminated so they can’t get a foothold again.”

A soft sigh escaped Jemma as her arms loosened until they fell to her sides. She bit her lip as he continued massaging her feet, hitting a particularly sensitive spot. “I suppose you are right,” she said quietly.

“I am,” Bucky said. He rose and pressed a kiss to her lips. “For now, however, I’m here. With the woman I love and who is carrying my child.”

“God, I’ve missed you,” Jemma whispered. “Even though I’d heard about you resurfacing, I never dared to hope you would…”

“Shhh,” Bucky said, kissing her again. “It doesn’t matter. I’m here and I’m never leaving again.”


End file.
